


Elegy

by thephilosophersapprentice



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cemetery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:22:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29617035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thephilosophersapprentice/pseuds/thephilosophersapprentice
Summary: Resembool was home to all his ghosts.
Relationships: Edward Elric & Resembool, Edward Elric & Trisha Elric
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Elegy

This town was the residence of all his ghosts.

The eyes of neighbors-turned-strangers weighed heavily on his shoulders. He kept his eyes front, marching down the road, acknowledging greetings with a simple nod. Right now, he had a mission to execute. Once-friends waved to him, and he gave them the faintest glimpse of a smile, not wanting to be rude but also not forgetting his duty.

Resembool only had the one road; the cemetery lay a few yards off the main thoroughfare. Here lay centuries of lives, hundreds of strangers and only a handful of people he’d known. It was an old, old cemetery. Resembool’s dead long since outnumbered the living.

One grave still stood out from the others. _Mom._ Two graves; only one of which was marked. He set the bouquet down on the grave. He could not leave flowers on both, but he could leave his regrets. His guilt to the second death he’d inflicted.

There were two graves and a house on the hill, gutted by fire.

As if entranced, he followed the path (well-worn for five years, grass-grown another five) up the hill at the very end of Resembool before the fenced-in confines of pasture gave way to undisturbed, untouched forest. He stood silent before the shattered and blackened timbers, the few fallen stones outlining where a foundation had been.

His childhood, cut down by his own hand, dead and buried in this blackened ground, a mausoleum to everything he’d left behind. And behind that mausoleum, a stranger stolen onto sacred ground and buried without funeral rites.

The monument watched him back, waiting.

_I can’t return to you. Even if I can’t truly leave this place, I still have work to do._

This had been home, once. It could be again. Maybe. One day.

But for now, it was inhabited only by all the ghosts he’d wronged.


End file.
